Ten Things to Know About the Middle East

By Stephen Zunes, AlterNet, 1 October 2001

1. Who are the Arabs?

Arab peoples range from the Atlantic coast in northwest Africa to the
Arabian peninsula and north to Syria. They are united by a common
language and culture. Though the vast majority are Muslim, there are
also sizable Christian Arab minorities in Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria
and Palestine.

Originally the inhabitants of the Arabian peninsula, the Arabs spread
their language and culture to the north and west with the expansion of
Islam in the 7th century. There are also Arab minorities in the Sahel
and parts of east Africa, as well as in Iran and Israel. The Arabs
were responsible for great advances in mathematics, astronomy and
other scientific disciplines while Europe was still mired in the Dark
Ages.

While there is great diversity in skin pigmentation, spoken dialect
and certain customs, there is a common identity which unites Arab
people that has sometimes been reflected in panArab nationalist
movements. Despite substantial political and other differences, many
Arabs share a sense that they are one nation, which has been
artificially divided through the machinations of Western imperialism
and which came to dominate the region with the decline of the Ottoman
Empire in the 19th and early 20th century.

There is also a growing Arab diaspora in Europe, North America, Latin
America, West Africa and Australia.

2. Who are the Muslims?

The Islamic faith originated in the Arabian peninsula, based on what
are believed to be divine revelations by God to the prophet
Mohammed. Muslims worship the same God as do Jews and Christians, and
share many of the same prophets and ethical traditions, including
respect for innocent life.

Approximately 90 percent of Muslims are of the orthodox or Sunni
tradition; most of the remainder are of the Shi'ite tradition,
which dominate Iran but also has substantial numbers in Iraq, Bahrain,
Yemen and Lebanon. Sunni Islam is nonhierarchical in structure. There
is not a tradition of separation between the faith and state
institutions as there is in the West, though there is an enormous
diversity in various Islamic legal traditions and the degree with
which the governments of predominately Muslim countries rely on
religious bases for their rule.

Political movements based on Islam have ranged from left to right,
from nonviolent to violent, from tolerant to chauvinistic. Generally,
the more moderate Islamic movements have developed in countries where
there is a degree of political pluralism in which they could operate
openly. There is a strong tradition of social justice in Islam, which
has often led to conflicts with regimes that are seen to be unjust or
unethical. The more radical movements have tended to arise in
countries that have suffered great social dislocation due to war or
inappropriate economic policies and/or are under autocratic rule.

Most of the world's Muslims are not Arabs. The world's largest
Muslim country, for example, is Indonesia. Other important nonArab
Muslim countries include Malaysia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan,
Iran, Turkey and the five former Soviet republics of Central Asia, as
well as Nigeria and several other black African states. Islam is one
of the fastest growing religions in the world and scores of countries
have substantial Muslim minorities. There are approximately five
million Muslims in the United States.

3. Why is there so much violence and political instability in the
Middle East?

For most of the past 500 years, the Middle East actually saw less
violence and warfare and more political stability than Europe or most
other regions of the world. It has only been in the last century that
the region has seen such widespread conflict. The roots of the
conflict are similar to those elsewhere in the Third World, and have
to do with the legacy of colonialism, such as artificial political
boundaries, autocratic regimes, militarization, economic inequality
and economies based on the export of raw materials for finished
goods. Indeed, the Middle East has more autocratic regimes,
militarization, economic inequality and the greatest ratio of exports
to domestic consumption than any region in the world.

At the crossroads of three continents and sitting on much of the
world's oil reserves, the region has been subjected to repeated
interventions and conquests by outside powers, resulting in a high
level of xenophobia and suspicion regarding the intentions of Western
powers going back as far as the Crusades. There is nothing in Arab or
Islamic culture that promotes violence or discord; indeed, there is a
strong cultural preference for stability, order and respect for
authority. However, adherence to authority is based on a kind of
social contract that assumes a level of justice which if broken by the
ruler gives the people a right to challenge it. The word jihad, often
translated as holy war, actually means holy struggle,
which can sometimes mean an armed struggle (qital), but also can mean
nonviolent action and political work within the established system.

Terrorism is not primarily a Middle Eastern phenomenon. In terms of
civilian lives lost, Africa has experienced far more terrorism in
recent decades than has the Middle East. Similarly, far more suicide
bombings in recent years have come from Hindu Tamils in Sri Lanka than
from Muslim Arabs in the Middle East. There is also a littleknown but
impressive tradition of nonviolent resistance and participatory
democracy in some Middle Eastern countries.

4. Why has the Middle East been the focus of U.S. concern about
international terrorism?

There has been a long history of terrorism generally defined as
violence by irregular forces against civilian targets in the Middle
East. During Israel's independence struggle in the 1940s, Israeli
terrorists killed hundreds of Palestinian and British civilians; two
of the most notorious terrorist leaders of that period Menachem Begin
and Yitzhak Shamir later became Israeli prime ministers whose
governments received strong financial, diplomatic and military support
from the United States.

Algeria's independence struggle from France in the 1950s included
widespread terrorist attacks against French colonists. Palestine's
ongoing struggle for independence has also included widespread
terrorism against Israeli civilians, during the 1970s through some of
the armed militias of the Palestine Liberation Organization and, more
recently, through radical underground Islamic groups. Terrorism has
also played a role in Algeria's current civil strife, in
Lebanon's civil war and foreign occupations during the 1980s, and
for many years in the Kurdish struggle for independence. Some Middle
Eastern governments notably Libya, Syria, Sudan, Iraq and Iran have in
the past had close links with terrorist organizations. In more recent
years, the AlQaeda movement a decentralized network of terrorist cells
supported by Saudi exile Osama bin Laden has become the major
terrorist threat, and is widely believed to be responsible for the
September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. Bin Laden himself
has been given sanctuary in Afghanistan, though his personal fortune
and widespread network of supporters has allowed him to be independent
on direct financial or logistical support from any government.

The vast majority of the people in the Middle East deplore terrorism,
yet point out that violence against civilians by governments has
generally surpassed that of terrorists. For example, the Israelis have
killed far more Arab civilians over the decades through using
U.S.supplied equipment and ordinance than have Arab terrorists killed
Israeli civilians.

Similarly, the U.S.supplied Turkish armed forces have killed far more
Kurdish civilians than have such radical Kurdish groups like the PKK
(the Kurdish acronym for the Kurdistan Workers' Party). Also, in
the eyes of many Middle Easterners, U.S. support for terrorist groups
like the Nicaraguan contras and various rightwing Cuban exile
organizations in recent decades, as well as U.S. air strikes and the
U.S.led sanctions against Iraq in more recent years, have made the
U.S. an unlikely crusader in the war against terrorism

4. What kind of political systems exist in the Middle East?

There are a variety of political systems in the Middle East.

Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar,
Morocco and Jordan are all conservative monarchies (in approximate
order of absolute rule). Iraq, Syria and Libya are leftleaning
dictatorships, with Iraq being one of the most totalitarian societies
in the world. Egypt and Tunisia are conservative autocratic
republics. Iran is an Islamic republic with an uneven trend in recent
years towards greater political openness. Sudan and Algeria are under
military rulers facing major insurrections.

Lebanon, Turkey and Yemen are republics with repressive aspects but
some degree of political pluralism. The only Middle Eastern country
with a strong tradition of parliamentary democracy is Israel, though
the benefits of this political freedom is largely restricted to its
Jewish citizens (the Palestinian Arab minority is generally treated as
secondclass citizens and Palestinians in the occupied territories are
subjected to military rule and serious human rights abuses). The
largely autocratic Palestinian Authority has been granted limited
autonomy in a series of noncontiguous enclaves in the West Bank and
Gaza Strip surrounded by Israeli occupation forces.

5. What sort of political alliances exist in the Middle East?

All Arab states, including the Palestinian Authority, belong to the
League of Arab States, which acts as a regional body similar to the
Organization of African Union or the Organization of American States,
which work together on issues of common concern. However, there are
enormous political divisions within Arab countries and other Middle
Eastern states. Turkey is a member of the NATO alliance, closely
aligned with the West and hopes to eventually become part of the
European union.

The six conservative monarchies of the Persian Gulf region have formed
the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), from where they pursue joint
strategic and economic interests and promote close ties with the West,
particularly Great Britain (which dominated the smaller sheikdoms in
the late 19th and early 20th century) and, more recently, the United
States.

Often a country's alliances are not a reflection of its internal
politics. For example, Saudi Arabia is often referred in the U.S.
media as a moderate Arab state, though it is the most
oppressive fundamentalist theocracy in the world today outside of
Talibanruled Afghanistan; moderate, in this case, simply means
that it has close strategic and economic relations with the United
States.

Jordan and Egypt are pro-Western, but have been willing to challenge
U.S. policy on occasion. Israel identifies most strongly with the West:
most of its leaders are Europeanborn or have been of European
heritage, and it has diplomatic relations with only a handful of
Middle Eastern countries. Iran alienated most of its neighbors with
its threat to expand its brand of revolutionary Islam to Arab world,
though its increasingly moderate orientation in recent years has led
to some cautious rapprochement. Syria, a former Soviet ally, has been
cautiously reaching out to more conservative Arab governments and with
the West; it currently exerts enormous political influence over
Lebanon. Iraq under Saddam Hussein, Libya under Muammar Qaddafi and
Sudan under their military junta remain isolated from most of other
Middle Eastern countries due to a series of provocative policies,
though many of these same countries oppose the punitive sanctions and
air strikes the United States has inflicted against these countries in
recent years.

6. What is the impact of oil in the Middle East?

The major oil producers of the Middle East include Saudi Arabia,
Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Iraq, Iran, Libya and
Algeria.

Egypt, Syria, Oman and Yemen have smaller reserves. Most of the major
oil producers of the Middle East are part of the Organization of
Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC. (NonMiddle Eastern OPEC
members include Indonesia, Venezuela, Nigeria and other countries.)
Much of the world's oil wealth exists along the Persian Gulf, with
particularly large reserves in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE.
About onequarter of U.S. oil imports come from the Persian Gulf
region; the Gulf supplies European states and Japan with an even
higher percentage of those countries' energy needs.

The imposition of higher fuel efficiency standards and other
conservation measures, along with the increased use of renewable
energy resources for which technologies are already available, could
eliminate U.S. dependence on Middle Eastern oil in a relatively short
period of time.

The Arab members of OPEC instigated a boycott against the United
States in the fall of 1973 in protest of U.S. support for Israel
during the October ArabIsraeli war, creating the first in a series of
energy shortages. The cartel has had periods of high and low costs for
oil, resulting in great economic instability. Most governments have
historically used their oil wealth to promote social welfare,
particularly countries like Algeria, Libya and Iraq, which professed
to a more socialist orientation. Yet all countries have squandered
their wealth for arms purchases and prestige projects. In general, the
influx of petrodollars has created enormous economic inequality both
within oilproducing states and between oilrich and oilpoor states as
well as widespread corruption and questionable economic priorities.

7. What is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict about?

The IsraeliPalestinian conflict is essentially over land, with two
peoples claiming historic rights to the geographic Palestine, a small
country in the eastern Mediterranean about the size of New Jersey. The
creation of modern Israel in 1948 was a fulfillment of the goal of the
Jewish nationalist movement, known as Zionism, as large numbers of
Jews migrated to their faith's ancestral homeland from Europe,
North Africa and elsewhere throughout the 20th century. They came
into conflict with the indigenous Palestinian Arab population, which
also was struggling for independence. The 1947 partition plan, which
divided the country approximately in half, resorted in a war which
ended in Israel seizing control of 78 percent of the territory within
a year. Most of the Palestinian population became refugees, in some
cases through fleeing the fighting and in other cases through being
forcibly expelled in a policy of ethnic cleansing. The remaining
Palestinian areas the West Bank and Gaza Strip came under control of
the neighboring Arab states of Jordan and Egypt, though these areas
were also seized by Israel in the 1967 war.

Israel has been colonizing parts of these occupied territories with
Jewish settlers in violation of the Geneva Conventions and UN Security
Council resolutions. Historically, both sides have failed to recognize
the legitimacy of the others' nationalist aspirations, though the
Palestinian leadership finally formally recognized Israel in 1993. The
peace process since then has been over the fate of the West Bank
(including Arab East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip, which is the
remaining 22 percent of the Palestine, occupied by Israel since
1967. The United States plays the dual role of chief mediator of the
conflict as well as the chief financial, military and diplomatic
supporter of Israel. The Palestinians want their own independent state
in these territories and to allow Palestinian refugees the right to
return. Israel, backed by the United States, insists the Palestinians
give up large swaths of the West Bank including most of Arab East
Jerusalem to Israel and to accept the resettlement of most refugees
into other Arab countries.

Since September 2000, there has been widespread rioting by
Palestinians against the ongoing Israeli occupation as well as
terrorist bombings within Israel by extremist Islamic groups. Israeli
occupation forces, meanwhile, have engaged in widespread killings and
other human rights abuses in the occupied territories.

Most Arabs feel a strong sense of solidarity with the Palestinian
struggle, though their governments have tended to manipulate their
plight for their own political gain. Neighboring Arab states have
fought several wars with Israel, though Egypt and Jordan now have
peace agreements and full diplomatic relations with the Jewish
state. In addition to much of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Israel
still occupies a part of southwestern Syria known as the Golan
Heights. The threats and hostility by Arab states towards Israel's
very existence has waned over the years. Full peace and diplomatic
recognition would likely come following a full Israeli withdrawal from
its occupied territories.

8. What has been the legacy of the Gulf War?

Virtually every Middle Eastern state opposed the Iraqi invasion and
occupation of Kuwait in 1990, though they were badly divided on the
appropriateness of the U.S.led Gulf War that followed. Even among
countries that supported the armed liberation of Kuwait, there was
widespread opposition to the deliberate destruction by the United
States of much of Iraq's civilian infrastructure during the war.
Even more controversial has been the enormous humanitarian
consequences of the U.S.led international sanctions against Iraq in
place since the war, which have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of
thousands of Iraqis, mostly children, from malnutrition and
preventable diseases. The periodic U.S. air strikes against Iraq also
have been controversial, as has the ongoing U.S. military presence in
Saudi Arabia, other Gulf states and in the Persian Gulf and Arabian
Sea.

Since Iraq's offensive military capability was largely destroyed
during the Gulf War and during the subsequent inspections regime, many
observers believe that U.S. fears about Iraq's current military
potential are exaggerated, particularly in light of the quiet U.S.
support for Iraq during the 1980s when its military was at its
peak. In many respects, the Gulf War led the oilrich GCC states into
closer identification with the United States and the West and less
with their fellow Arabs, though there is still some distrust about
U.S. motivations and policies in the Middle East.

9. How has the political situation in Afghanistan evolved and how is
it connected to the Middle East?

Afghanistan, an impoverished landlocked mountainous country, has
traditionally been identified more with Central and South Asia than
with the Middle East. A 1978 coup by communist military officers
resulted in a series of radical social reforms, which were imposed in
an autocratic matter and which resulted in a popular rebellion by a
number of armed Islamic movements. The Soviet Union installed a more
compliant communist regime at the end of 1979, sending in tens of
thousands of troops and instigating a major bombing campaign,
resulting in largescale civilian casualties and refugee flows. The war
lasted for much of the next decade. The United States sent arms to the
Islamic resistance, known as the mujahadin, largely through
neighboring Pakistan, then under the rule of an ultraconservative
Islamic military dictatorship. Most of the U.S. aid went to the most
radical of the eight different mujahadin factions on the belief that
they would be least likely to reach a negotiated settlement with the
Sovietbacked government and would therefore drag the Soviet forces
down. Volunteers from throughout the Islamic world, including the
young Saudi businessman Osama bin Laden, joined the struggle. The CIA
trained many of these recruits, including Bin Laden and many of his
followers.

When the Soviets and Afghanistan's communist government were
defeated in 1992, a vicious and bloody civil war broke out between the
various mujahadin factions, war lords and ethnic militias. Out of this
chaos emerged the Taliban movement, led by young seminary students
from the refugee camps in Pakistan, educated in ultraconservative
Saudifunded schools, which took over 85 percent of the country by 1996
and imposed longawaited order and stability, but established a brutal
totalitarian theocracy based on a virulently reactionary and
misogynist interpretation of Islam. The Northern Alliance, consisting
of the remnants of various factions from the civil war in the 1990s,
control a small part of the northeast corner of the country.

10. How have most Middle Eastern governments reacted to the September
11 terrorist attacks and their aftermath?

Virtually every government and the vast majority of their populations
reacted with the same horror and revulsion as did people in the United
States, Europe and elsewhere. Despite scenes shown repeatedly on U.S.
television of some Palestinians celebrating the attacks, the vast
majority of Palestinians also shared in the world's condemnation.
If the United States, in conjunction with local governments, limits
its military response to commandostyle operations against suspected
terrorist cells, the U.S. should receive the cooperation and support
of most Middle Eastern countries. If the response is more widespread,
based more on retaliation than selfdefense, and ends up killing large
numbers of Muslim civilians, it could create a major antiAmerican
reaction which would increase support for the terrorists and lessen
the likelihood for the needed cooperation to break up the AlQaeda
network, which operates in several Middle Eastern countries.

While few Middle Easterners support bin Laden's methods, the
principal concerns expressed in his manifestoes the U.S.'s
wrongful support for Israel and for Arab dictatorships, the disruptive
presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia and the humanitarian impact of
the sanctions on Iraq are widely supported. Ultimately, a greater
understanding of the Middle East and the concerns of its governments
and peoples are necessary before the United States can feel secure
from an angry backlash from the region.

Stephen Zunes is an associate professor of politics and chair of the
Peace & Justice Studies Program at the University of San
Francisco. He serves as a senior policy analyst and Middle East
editor for the Foreign Policy in Focus Project.